Evolution Quiz II: Electric Boogaloo

And we’re back! The second half of this silly test gets increasingly surreal, to the point where I’m thinking more and more that this is just a joke and not a serious argument for creationism. Of course, Poe’s Law tells me that I can’t ever know for sure.

Let’s do this.

8. List any of the millions of creatures in just five stages of its evolution showing the progression of a new organ of any kind. When you have done this, you can collect the millions of dollars in rewards offered for proof of evolution!

What on Earth is a “stage” of evolution? I wasn’t aware this was graduated somehow. I suppose you could call a single generation a “stage”, which means that they’re asking for a new organ between, say, you and your great-great-great-grandfather. For extra fun, “organ” probably isn’t as simple to define as, say, gaining a spleen.

Why five? Another apparently arbitrary number, though this is is extra weird because it asks for five of something that isn’t sufficiently defined.

Go back and rewrite the question.

9. Why is it that the very things that would prove Evolution (transitional forms) are still missing?

Welcome to the 21st century. I know, I know, you’re really looking for a crocoduck, aren’t you? Except chimeras like that aren’t predicted by evolution, hell they’d be a pretty solid blow against modern evolutionary theory. Evolution is a very gradual process, and every individual critter is a complete animal in its own right, regardless of its ancestry, or whatever its descendents may turn out to be.

10. Explain why something as complex as human life could happen by chance, but something as simple as a coin must have a creator. (Show your math solution.)

Math solution? Do you really think “more complex” means “more likely built by a creative intelligence”? The first thing we humans do when we want to build something is remove as much complexity as we can. Take your coin example. When we want to make things out of metal, let’s say copper, where do we start? If your answer is “We go to the store and buy some copper”, you aren’t thinking things through. First we need to extract the copper from the earth.

Copper isn’t found in nice, pure lumps. Perhaps the closest we can find to that is the green stone malachite, with is a complex chemical compound that contains lots of copper in it. We can extract the copper from it using a reduction kiln, removing all that complexity so that we can stamp coins in nice pure copper discs.

The complexity of living things is a point in evolution’s favor, unless you want to argue that the creator is a complete moron. (What sadistic lunatic would build the human knee the way it is intentionally?) Living things are not merely complex, they’re unnecessarily so. Making a design weaker than it could be in order to make it more complicated is not a sign of intelligence.

11. Why aren’t any fossils or coal or oil being formed today?

Who says they aren’t? I don’t understand this, would you like us to set up a webcam so you can watch the process? Are you suggesting that the clearly eroded surfaces of, say, the Sphinx in Egypt are no longer being eroded because you can’t see the stone wearing away? Good heavens take a cave tour and look at stalagmites that have grown upward over centuries from calcium particles in drops of water!

If I recall correctly the energy in gasoline that moves your car around was first captured from the Sun by plants living four hundred million years ago. That’s not just older than the dinosaurs, it’s farther away from the dinosaurs than the dinosaurs are from us. I think it’s safe to say that fossil fuels are being used faster than they’re being made.

12. List 50 vestigial or useless organs or appendages in the human body.

No. That’s simply absurd, especially given the apparently arbitrary numbers. You only allow five “stages” for a whole new organ, but you won’t be satisfied with less than 50 vestigial bits? Fuck you.

But I won’t leave you empty handed. Here’s a link to endogenous retroviruses, bits of our bodies that started as viral infections. We’ve adapted to them so well that now they’re a normal part of us.

13. Why hasn’t anyone collected the millions of dollars in rewards for proof of evolution?

I think “millions” is likely hyperbole there. I did find a few sites claiming such prizes exist, the largest cash sum was over a million, but on a site that hadn’t updated since 2002. The only one I was able to find any real information about was Kent Hovind’s $250,000 prize ” to anyone who can give any empirical evidence (scientific proof) for evolution.*”

Kent is currently serving a prison term for tax fraud, but his son Eric might be willing to honor this challenge. Except look at the definition used for this challenge:

“* NOTE: When I use the word evolution, I am not referring to the minor variations found in all of the various life forms (microevolution). I am referring to the general theory of evolution which believes these five major events took place without God:
1. Time, space, and matter came into existence by themselves.
2. Planets and stars formed from space dust.
3. Matter created life by itself.
4. Early life-forms learned to reproduce themselves.
5. Major changes occurred between these diverse life forms (i.e., fish changed to amphibians, amphibians changed to reptiles, and reptiles changed to birds or mammals).”

Of these, only parts 4 & 5 are relevant to the theory of evolution. Hell, 1 & 2 aren’t even in the field of biology, and 3 is the realm of abiogenesis, which is probably more chemistry than biology. No single example of evidence could demonstrate all that, heck number 1 isn’t even a meaningful statement under the current big bang models as I understand them. (Which is to say, not very well.) It looks like what Kent really wants is to go back to college.

If this is typical of your “millions of dollars in rewards for proof of evolution” it’s frankly not worth it. No point playing if it’s clear that the game is rigged.

14. If life began hundreds of millions of years ago, why is the earth still under populated?

Under populated?! Right, you’re clearly just pulling my leg now. By what bizarre definition is the world under populated? There is life in every crevice of this planet, we have found life in places we didn’t think it was possible for anything to live. Living things have changed the chemistry of the atmosphere on this world, all that oxygen wasn’t there until the plants got to work. There are creatures living in the bottom of the ocean who do not even get their energy from the Sun.

The coldest tundra, there is life. The driest desert, there is life. Down in the deeps where no light reaches and the pressure is a thousand times the atmosphere we live in, we still find life. There is a lake in Antarctica that is frozen over the year round, and yet life survives within.

Oh right, you think everything’s about humans. Well, there are seven billion of us, how many do you think there are supposed to be?